


Lucifer's Blessing

by Shardinian



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28215675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shardinian/pseuds/Shardinian
Summary: Love, as it was, in the Devildom, was a peculiar and promiscuous thing.  It was free, and unfettered, and completely without judgement.  One could love any demon as deeply as any his brothers, and each one would feel such love for what it was, without worrying about what else, or who else, might be lurking beyond the horizon.Except for two.Satan and Lucifer, it seemed, were the only two who couldn't share.Oh, they could share with Mammon, and Leviathan, and Beelzebub; they could even share with Asmodeus and Belphegor, if they had to.But they could not… would not… share with each other.“Satan… Lucifer… I love you both, and I always will.  But if you can't find some way to love me back, together… then I'm done.  It's over.  Finish your paperwork alone.  Go to your museum alone.  Do whatever you want, just… leave me out of it.”  Suki stepped back to glare her tear-filled agony at both of them, then shoved her way past Satan, out of the study and, unless they somehow managed the impossible and finally learned to share… out of both of their lives.
Relationships: Lucifer (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	Lucifer's Blessing

**Author's Note:**

> My Secret Santa piece written for @sukiaisaka
> 
> I really hope you like it. Writing your MC was quite the challenge, and I hope she came out alright.

It was getting worse.

Just when it had begun was anybody's guess. Had it been that night in the library? That cold, quiet night, when she'd been perched high on a ladder and reaching out for that one, last book she'd needed for her assignment, reaching out much further than rickety rungs or gravity considered wise, reaching out because to climb all the way back down and roll the ladder into place seemed an unnecessary hassle when that one, last book she'd needed had been right there, just… so close that her fingers had brushed against the spine… just a little... bit… further…

Until ‘just a little bit further’ had become ‘just a bit too far’, and everything had come crashing down. That one, last book, a dozen more that were neither one nor the last, a rickety wooden ladder, and Suki herself.

Satan had caught only one of them, but it was the only one that mattered.

There had only been three people in the library on that cold, quiet night.

Suki, Satan, and Lucifer.

Both demons had leapt to their feet at the first crack of splintering wood, but Satan had been one step closer, and one breath quicker.

His arms had lingered around her waist, even after he'd set her back on her feet; his fingers had spent a dozen more seconds than necessary, curling through her hair as they set every tousled strand back in its proper place; his cheeks had flushed a little more than they should have, considering there had been nothing at all improper nor unwarranted about his sternly-worded lecture on ladder safety.

It had been the first time, so long ago, now, that she'd seen a demon lord blush, that she'd realized their fingers could be shy and their blazing eyes could be nervous, and her heart had been racing too hard and too fast to realize, until many weeks later, that across the room, one step further and one breath slower, Lucifer had packed up his books, extinguished the oil lamp on his table, and left.

He hadn't said a word, but a chill had swirled in his wake, and the library carpet had crunched like autumn frost for the rest of the night.

Had that been the night?

Or had it been that morning, many months later; that morning she'd slept late and missed breakfast and had slunk into first period alchemy, bleary-eyed and just barely on the proper side of awake, and had found herself struggling to follow the complicated recipe or keep track of any of a dozen unholy ingredients, and had concocted a corrosive disaster that had eaten clean through the vial, the stand and the desk (and partway into the floor) instead of a healing salve?

Satan had been watching, concerned and fretting, from the other side of the classroom; he'd been trying his best to tutor from afar with nods and head shakes and carefully mouthed instructions (though stared at the ceiling and whistled innocently anytime the teacher turned around), but all the well-intentioned charades in the Devildom weren't enough to save her bubbling catastrophe (or her shoes).

The shadow that had loomed, then, over her shoulder, had turned her blood to frost. One might think a shadow is a shadow is a shadow, but only if one had never felt the unique, oppressive darkness that swirled beneath the dark side of the Morningstar. Playing video games with Levi all night was a punishable offense in and of itself, let alone missing breakfast, or interrupting the teacher to let herself in late, or failing to follow the simplest of instructions…

She'd tried, frozen and ashamed and fearful, to hide her failure from Lucifer's judgemental eyes, until a stern, gloved hand had slipped its way around her waist and set an empty vial on her desk.

Her name was the softest word she'd ever heard on his lips. “Suki. May I offer my assistance?”

And he'd helped her try again, leaning up against her back and murmuring his instructions in her ear, flatly correcting every mistake yet whispering the rarest bit of praise with every tiny success, and when the time had come to add a single drop of the most crucial ingredient, he’d even slid off his gloves so he could cradle her hands in his, steady and confident and strong, and-

-the classroom door had slammed in its frame.

Satan had attended no other classes, that day.

Had it begun in the classroom that morning?

In the library on that cold, quiet night?

…five-thousand years ago?

Whenever it had begun, one thing was clear:

Day by day, minute by minute, every time the second hand on the antique grandfather clock in the lobby ticked…

…it was getting worse.

*****

Day by day.

“Satan, no! Are you crazy? I can't possibly accept all these!”

“You can, and you will,” he chuckled, as he added another of his books to the precarious pile in her arms, now so high she could barely see over the top of it. “You said your shop is always on the lookout for first-editions, didn't you? Besides, you borrow my books all the time. How is this any different?”

“I borrow them, I don't sell them! I'm not Mammon,” she sighed, as she jostled the pile into a more accommodating (slightly less crooked) position. “If I put these up for sale in the human world, you’ll never see them again.”

“Sure I will. Do you have any idea how long demons live? Everything ends up back down here, eventually. And you know me by now, don't you? I can be… patient,” he purred into her ear, as he ran a single, teasing fingertip up her spine while she couldn't fight back, just to delight in the way it made her shiver, “when it comes to those things that… pique my interest, of course.”

“Hey hey hey! Not while my arms are full!” Suki giggled and squirmed, trying (though not too hard, mind you) to escape his playful advances. “We'll have plenty of time for that later, _after_ you help me pack these up!” She backed up to the door, already open just a crack, pushed it with her foot, turned around… and froze.

Every last one of Satan's precious first-editions crashed to the floor.

How Lucifer always managed to just… be there, in all the wrong places and at all the wrong times, was starting to seem less coincidence than consideration.

“I'm afraid Satan hasn’t ‘plenty of time for that’, Suki. He's busy.”

“The hell I am.” Satan's good humour shattered like fine porcelain and rained razor-thin shards across the floor, silently daring anyone to step too close. “And get out of my room, asshole. Nobody invited you.”

Poignantly ignoring the insult, Lucifer shoved an overflowing binder of paperwork into Satan's hands. “You agreed to review the upcoming semester notes.”

“Yes, and I have three weeks to get it done.”

“Not anymore. The deadline has changed.”

“What?! Since when? By whom?”

“By me. Have it finished by morning, or do not show yourself at breakfast.”

Suki had promised herself, back before bad had become worse and uncomfortable had become unbearable, that she would keep herself out of it. Whatever steely-eyed, venom-tongued conflict was churning just below the brothers' supposedly-civilized surfaces was theirs alone – and they had both made as much painfully clear.

When she'd asked Satan about it, he'd growled under his breath and left her to finish her homework alone.

When she'd asked Lucifer, he’d ‘gotten a headache,’ and politely insisted that she sleep the rest of the night in her own bed.

When she'd asked the rest of the brothers, the answer was always the same.

That’s just how they are.

It's how they've always been.

It's how they always will be.

Don't get involved.

They'll sort it out.

They always do.

 **Don't** get involved.

She did her noble best, of course, but it was getting harder, day by day, and minute by minute.

Especially now that the ‘it’ they needed to sort out was, apparently...

…her.

“Lucifer, come on,” she heard herself say, even as she was reminding herself that she swore she would keep out of it, “A few hours won't be the end of the world, will it? The new semester doesn't start for a month, and I know how swamped you are, but you can count on Satan. If he said he'll have it done on time, he will.”

“Don't bother,” Satan snapped, with his venomous glare fixed entirely on Lucifer, “he won't change his mind. Take your books and go. Maybe _he'll_ help you pack them up. I, apparently, have a lot of work to do.”

He slammed the door in their faces, and didn't show his face at breakfast.

*****

Hour by hour.

Satan didn't show up for class the next day, either.

It wasn't until late that night, when Suki had been snuggled in bed under Lucifer's loving arm with his fingers curling idly through her hair and a classical lullaby soothing away the terrible knowledge that she was the ‘it’ between them, that the Avatar of Wrath had at last made his presence, and his disdain, fully known again.

_THUD._

The sound was heavy and wooden, and loud enough to snap her back from the clutches of a badly-needed rest.

Lucifer sighed, tossed on his nightgown, and opened his bedroom door.

The hallway was strewn with papers, all meticulously completed; all hatefully torn to shreds.

Satan was nowhere to be seen.

The cover page was nailed to Lucifer's door with a thick iron dagger, one dripping with (what Suki desperately hoped was) thick, red ink that smelled lightly of copper. Scrawled across the crumpled paper was a single word:

_FINISHED._

*****

Minute by minute.

None of the demon brothers had ever expressed anything even remotely approaching jealously.

Not even Levi.

(Or, almost as surprisingly, Mammon.)

Belphie had never second-guessed her motives, even when she showed up to share a nap with Mammon's rings on her fingers.

Mammon had never considered his brothers rivals, even when she yawned and complained that Levi had kept her up all night.

Satan had never batted an eye, when he stepped into the kitchen to find Beel spoon-feeding her a sample of tomorrow's breakfast.

Lucifer had never frowned, when she showed up for breakfast with her nails exquisitely painted and her hair a tousled disaster.

Love, as it was, in the Devildom, was a peculiar and promiscuous thing. It was free, and unfettered, and completely without judgement. One could love any demon as deeply as any his brothers, and each one would feel such love for what it was, without worrying about what else, or who else, might be lurking beyond the horizon.

Except for two.

Satan and Lucifer, it seemed, were the only two who couldn't share.

Oh, they could share with Mammon, and Leviathan, and Beelzebub; they could even share with Asmodeus and Belphegor, if they had to.

But they could not… _would_ not… share with each other.

And hour by hour…

And minute by minute…

It was getting worse.

Lucifer's study was freezing, even with the fireplace roaring. It was a rare thing for the Devildom to get chilly, let alone cold, and the unseasonable weather had left the demon lord shivering and grumbling and exhaling warm, moist breaths into his hands, trying to keep the frost in his blood from numbing his fingertips.

When his overcoat hadn't been enough to keep the chill at bay, he'd tossed his heavy woolen bathrobe on overtop of his suit. When even that hadn't been enough to keep the goosebumps from tickling up his arms, he’d enrobed himself in four massive, black wings, each with their feathers puffed up in a most unsightly fashion to trap and reflect every last iota of body heat back against his skin.

Lucifer fluffed up his feathers, breathed another bit of life back into his fingertips, retrieved his quill, and started to work on his next page.

Why the hell was it so goddamned cold down here? This was the Devildom. The lakes of fire and sulphur rains were supposed to ensure a tropical, if not desert, climate – and unless the Leafs had finally won the cup (which they had not), there was no good reason a wintery frost should be turning his study window into intricate, fractal art, and his blood into a numb, syrupy gruel.

The weather had never played such nasty tricks back in the Celestial Realm. Up there, it had never been too hot, nor too cold; it had never snowed unless one had lamented about how it never snows, nor rained unless one had fondly remembered a warm, spring rain.

Down here, though, the weather just did whatever the hell it pleased – not entirely unlike everyone else.

Including, it would seem, one especially precocious human.

“Lucifer? Aha, there you are! I thought I might find you in here,” Suki smiled, as she pushed her way into the solemn study without so much as knocking, first. “I know how much you hate the cold, so I brought some tea.”

Even before he’d consciously registered her presence, his wings had, all on their own, fluttered happily and spread their flight-feathers into an excited fan across the floor.

Lucifer scowled, grabbed his treacherous wings in his hands and did his flustered best to smooth them back into a more dignified position. “Hrrrmmm. My… apologies, Suki. These damn things seem to have a mind of their own, lately. They never used to puff up like this when I was an angel,” he grumbled. “Why they do this every time you show up is beyond me.”

“Don't be shy,” Suki grinned, as she nudged his mountain of paperwork out of the way and set her tray on his desk. “I like it. Your beast is the peacock now, isn't it? Maybe they're just trying to impress a…” she winked at him, “…potential mate?”

“…Maybe they are,” Lucifer sighed, as he gave up trying to convince his wings to behave themselves and left them to flutter and fan and primp and do whatever the hell else they pleased. “So long as the mate they're trying to impress is you,” he spun his chair around, grabbed her waist and pulled her into his lap with a devious smile, “I think I can live with that.”

“I could live with that too,” she grinned, as she brushed his hair away from his horns and kissed the diamond set into his forehead. “But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Tonight, I'm just here to bring you tea. You've been working yourself to the bone, but still have hours left before you can rest, don't you?”

Lucifer glanced at the teetering pile of paperwork and sighed. “Unfortunately, I do. Some entry level harpy got tangled in a suicide tree and snapped a wing; now the whole circle is threatening to unionize if we don't concede some manner of hazard pay, which is simply… ah, nevermind. If I find it tedious, I can't imagine how it must sound to you.” He wrapped his wings around them both, fluffed up his feathers without a care for how silly he looked, then poured them both a cup of tea that smelled of sugared lemon and warm, wintery spices. “Shall we have ourselves a well-deserved break, then?”

“Definitely.” She snuggled into his black down cocoon, cupped her mug in both hands and blew the steam away. “I went with a Chai blend this time; I know it's not your usual, but it's the perfect thing to warm your bones when nothing else will. You guys don't have it down here, so I mixed the spices myself. I really hope you like it.”

A more earnest hope had never been spoken; Suki held her breath as Lucifer breathed in the aromatic steam and took a tiny sip, and didn't let it out again until he favored her with a satisfied sigh. “Mmmmm. I daresay I may have a new ‘usual’,” he chuckled. “You have outdone yourself again; this is the second-most divine gift you've brought me tonight.”

The compliment earned him a tender kiss, one that drove every last bit of chill from the room and left Lucifer ruefully admitting to himself that, not for the first time, a mere human had been able to accomplish something he had not. With her body snuggled up against his chest, working its magic from the outside-in, and the steaming tea, with all its peculiar spices, working its magic from the inside-out, he was finally, for the first time all evening… warm.

Even the eternally perfect weather of the Celestial Realm had never felt quite as good as this one, single moment in his freezing cold study.

He took another sip, and savoured every second of its passing; the traces of ginger and cardamom and nutmeg that brought with them fond memories of Barbatos’ holiday cookies, the warmth that bathed his tongue and caressed his throat, then sank to pleasantly blossom in his stomach; a warmth that carried on its heels a peculiar tingling that spread to his toes, then to his fingers; a peculiar… unpleasant tingling that rocketed out to the tips of his wings and straight up his spine, until-

Lucifer gasped, and arched back in his chair.

His mug clattered to the floor.

“Gah!” His head swimming with uninvited magic, Lucifer shoved Suki off his lap and lurched away from the desk, staggered and flapped his great wings in a vain attempt to keep his balance, then fell hard to his hands and knees.

“Lucifer?! Lucifer! What's wrong?!”

The rush was over as quickly as it had begun. Panting quietly, Lucifer shook the last dregs of confusion out of his head, then scowled and tried, three unsuccessful times, to push himself back onto his feet. “Suki,” he did his best not to outright growl, “were you alone when you prepared this tea?”

“What? Of course I was!” She dropped to her knees and reached out to help him to his feet, but the bristling demon snapped his arm away. “What's going on? Are you ok?”

His red eyes were beginning to smoulder, in that tell-tale way they so often burned when one of his brothers had just done something unconscionable, irresponsible, or outright stupid. “I'm fine,” he snapped, before catching himself and breathing a slow, steady reminder that she was more likely a pawn than a wrathful queen. “I'm fine,” he repeated, this time without the accusatory undertone, “but please do not touch me. Those spices that you said you mixed yourself – where did they come from?”

With her heart teetering someplace between concern and confusion and guilt, that awful, faceless guilt that aches all the worse because its intentions had been pure, Suki shuffled back and forced her hands to stay put in her lap, lest they disobey his simplest of requests. “I got… I got most of them from the kitchen,” she sniffled, without knowing why, exactly, the admission made her feel like sniffling, “but…”

“But…?”

“But you guys didn't have any… any nutmeg down here, so I… so I asked…”

The jarring knock on the door was, suddenly, not entirely unexpected.

Speak of the devil, as they say.

“Lucifer? You in here?” Without waiting for an answer (because he already had it, of course), Satan let himself into the study. He glanced from Lucifer to Suki and back again, looking not the least bit surprised, then smirked. “I'm not interrupting anything, am I? Lucifer, whatever are you doing on the floor? That's terrible for your old knees, you know.”

Still stuck on his hands and knees, Lucifer twisted around to drill a hateful glare up at his amused little brother. “I **will** kill you for this.”

With all the pieces falling into place, Suki gaped at Satan. He couldn’t have…

He _wouldn't_ have…

Such a small, fragile mortal could never be the Avatar of Wrath, or Fury, or Anger, or the Avatar of anything at all, but as the horrible realization sank its claws into her heart and started to squeeze, Suki's damp eyes blazed with a hellfire all their own. 

“…Satan? What did you do?!”

“I just cursed him a little. Don't worry about it,” he chuckled, as he stepped around one of his brother’s quivering wings and patted him condescendingly between his horns, “it won't hurt him, and it'll wear off by morning. He'll just be stuck on all fours until then, that's all.” His nonchalant banter became a sly, sadistic smile. “Like a dog.” He grabbed one of Lucifer's horns and twisted, until he'd forced his seething, spell-bound brother to lay upside-down on the carpet. “Like a filthy, flea-bitten dog. But that doesn't mean he can't get his work done,” he added, with one last, demeaning pat. “Even I wouldn't dare interrupt something that important. If those harpies ever unionize, we'll all be up to our eyeballs in grade-A level bureaucratic bullshit.” Taking care collect every last page, Satan laid Lucifer's mountain of paperwork, and his inkwell, and his quill, together on the floor. “There you go. Now be a good boy and finish it by morning, or don't show your face at breakfast,” he smirked. “You want a blanket or anything? It's kinda chilly in here.”

Lucifer bared his teeth and beat his wings against the floor…

…but couldn't do anything else.

“GODDAMN YOU SATAN! I'LL SEE YOU BURN FOR THIS!”

It was almost… too much to process. Suki rose unsteadily to her feet, feeling all too much like that pesky ‘it’ again, and turned her outraged eyes on Satan. “You…used me? You used me to curse him?!”

Apparently oblivious to whatever line he'd just crossed, Satan laughed. “Don't read too much into it. I try to curse him every other day, and more often than not, I end up at the receiving end of a steel-tipped bullwhip for my trouble. This was just a… convenient way past his defenses, that's all. He really does have a lot of papers left to sign, though, and since it'll be a bit more difficult from the floor, we should be courteous, and leave him to his work.” He held out a hand. “There's a new museum opening on the south side of the fourth circle that I’m sure you'll find fascinating; every exhibit is a first-hand-"

Suki slapped his hand away, with a viciousness that surprised even her. “NO! No, Satan; that's it! I can't do this anymore!” Her heart felt the furious tears before her eyes did, but she forced them to remain nothing more than a feeling. She would let herself cry later, in Purgatory Hall, wrapped in the ever-loving arms of a sympathetic angel… but not here. 

Not now.

“Satan… Lucifer… I love you both, and I always will. But if you can't find some way to love me back, together… then I'm done. It's over. Finish your paperwork alone. Go to your museum alone. Do whatever you want, just… leave me out of it.” Suki stepped back to glare her tear-filled agony at both of them, then shoved her way past Satan, out of the study and, unless they somehow managed the impossible and finally learned to share… out of both of their lives.

*****

The grandfather clock in the foyer sounded its chimes.

3:30am.

…the second hand ticked past twelve, and showed no signs of stopping. 

She'd withdrawn her character from the game an hour ago, but neither brother had noticed. Levi and Mammon continued the race on their own, their eyes glued to the split-screen, cursing and laughing and egging each other on without a care in the world for the distracted heart of their former playmate.

“Wha?! Where the hell did your dude just come from?! You weren't even on my screen a second ago!”

“It's called a shortcut, n00b,” Levi grinned. “Deal with it.”

“Short-cut, my ass – deal with this, then!”

Levi erupted into a tirade of curses as a shiny blue turtle shell slammed his cart eight ways from Sunday.

Suki had played with them for the first hour, but had politely excused herself from the second. It had been three days, now, since she'd seen either Lucifer or Satan, and her anguished heart was tearing itself to shreds.

For the last fifteen minutes, she'd been staring dully at her hands.

It was almost a shame they weren't holding any answers.

“Hey, guys,” she finally ventured, when not-knowing at last became the lesser of two evils, “have… either of you seen Satan lately?”

“He's in Lucifer's dungeon,” Levi answered, as casually as if the answer had been ‘he’s out picking dandelions’. “Mammon what the hell?! You can't just ram me off the edge of the track!”

…

…

He's in…

Suki stared at the back of Levi's mop of blue hair, unseeing and unblinking, until some distant part of her mind remembered that words were a thing. “Lucifer has a… dungeon?”

“’Course he does,” Mammon quipped, as he leaned into the next corner to give his character an imagined advantage. “He's a card-carryin' sadist, ain't he? Sorry, no - he's THE card-carryin' sadist, really. You don’t think he carries that whip around ‘cause he spends his leisure time rustlin' cattle, do ya? It's kinda his - WHOA WHY'S MY SCREEN ALL BLACK?! HOW AM I SUPPOSTA DRIVE IF I CAN'T SEE NOTHIN’?!”

“Hahaha! That's just my squidy, inking all over your stupid face!”

“…Ew. Comin' from you, Levi, that's just nasty.”

Suki stared through the rushing colours on the screen without seeing them; she listened to the brothers' banter, flipping so easily from the macabre to the mundane and back again, without hearing a word of it.

Despite the fact that Levi's room was a veritable sauna, warmed by eight-thousand gallons of tropical sea water, an icy chill trickled down her spine, leaving trails of goosebumps prickling across her arms and down the backs of her clammy hands.

An indescribable sense of dread, that primordial instinct that whispers the names of terrified children from darkened closets and just underneath the bed, burrowed into her chest and set her heart racing.

Somehow, somewhere… something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

And it was all because of her.

He's in Lucifer's-

She grabbed Mammon's shoulder, but he didn't peel his eyes off the screen. “Where is it?!”

“Where's what? Oh, Lucifer’s man-cave? It's in the basement, but we ain't allowed in unless we're… ahem… ‘invited’.” He shuddered at the unpleasant thought (or memory), which cost him two pole positions and a power-up, then added under his breath, “I'd rather spend a month hangin’ by my ankles than one hour in that damn room.”

“You're so full of crap, Mammon. You spend more time down there than Lucifer does,” Levi snickered. “You just can't admit that you like it.”

“Do not!”

“Do so!”

“Do not times infini-OH COME ON!”

Levi snickered as Mammon slammed his cart face-first into a penguin.

“WHAT THE HELL?! That wasn't there the last time!”

“The course changes every lap, idiot. That's what you get for taking your eyes off the prize, looool!”

Suki dug her nails into Mammon's shoulder and, this time, yanked him away from the screen so hard that his controller unplugged itself.

“HEY! What's the big idea?! I had a thousand Grimm ridin' on that game!”

“Show me how to get there.”

“Ooooh no; no freakin' way! Lucifer might forgive you for barging in on one of his sessions, but if he even _thinks_ I helped ya do it, my ass'll be toast! The Great Mammon might be a lot of things, but he ain't…”

She tuned him out before ever finding out what the Great Mammon wasn't.

She didn't have time for this.

The last class Satan or Lucifer had attended had been three days ago.

Three days.

She didn't have time for this.

She'd already waited three days too long.

“Fine.” She shoved her way past him, and out of the room. “I'll find it myself.”

“What?! Are you out of your tiny human mind?! Do you have any idea how easy is it to get lost down there? Or how many things livin' down there eat humans for- hey! Hey, wait up!”

Looking entirely too guilty for a demon perpetually guilty of one thing or another, Mammon fell into step beside her, wringing his hands together and casting fretful glances over his shoulder with every step. “This is crazy,” he was already mumbling, apparently to himself, “I'm gonna be in _soooo_ much trouble… the one day I don't steal nothin', and I'm _still_ gonna get my ass kicked…” In spite of his understandable misgivings, though, he still grabbed her hand and reluctantly took the lead as they descended the grand staircase.

“Mammon, I… thank you.”

“Don’t go gettin' all sappy on me; I'm supposta keep your dumb ass safe, that's all. You know damn well I ain't about to let my human get her arms chewed off just ‘cause she wandered into the wrong room,” he grumbled, as he took another right, then a left, down torchlit, stone-walled hallways that all looked exactly the same. “I'll show ya the door, but that's it. After that, you're on your own. Why do ya even want this so bad, anyway?” He'd dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and was glancing down every hallway they passed as if he fully expected Lucifer to jump out of the shadows dressed like a ghost just to give him a heart attack. “This ain't nothing new; Satan and Lucifer have been at each other's throats since day one, and I coulda _sworn_ I told ya not to get involved.”

“…I'm already involved,” she murmured, more as an admission to herself than an answer to his question. “Whatever lies between them… it's always something, right? Something different, every time. Well… this time, that something is-"

“This is it,” he interrupted, just in time to save her from having to admit the gut-wrenching truth aloud. “Have fun.” He tried the doorknob, then rapped his knuckles against the thick oaken door. “Ok, well, looks like Lucifer ain't interested in having company,” he decided, before he'd even finished knocking. “Let's go. Maybe Levi'll let me go double-or-nothing on the championship round.” He was already three steps back down the hall, tugging insistently on her sleeve, before he realized she had no intention of coming along. “Come on! We tried, right? Satan'll be fine, trust me. I mean yeah, sure, most of us can only handle Lucifer's lessons for a few hours, and Satan's been gone, what… a whole day?”

“Three. Three days. Mammon, please – this is all my fault, and if I can't find a way to stop it, and… and one of them gets really hurt, I… I won't be able to live with… with…”

There was more, but Mammon knew his human better than she thought he did. He held up a hand to shield her from her own confession, and gently pushed her away from the door. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Stand back,” he sighed. “In for a dime, in for a dollar, right?”

He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, and was engulfed in a shimmering white light. The light thickened, until it was viscous as the thickest syrup, then rolled down his back and fell away from his body in fat, heavy drops, each of which transformed itself into a shiny, newly-minted penny before tinkling to the floor and rolling off in every direction.

Fully transformed and at his most powerful, Mammon pinned his wings behind his back, bared his teeth, took a deep, steadying breath…

And slammed his shoulder straight through the door.

The instant the sound-proof barrier was shattered, the crack of a gunshot echoed down the hall.

Mammon practically somersaulted into the room, with Suki right on his heels.

She had expected to see the worst. 

What she actually saw was a thousand times worse than even that. 

The sound hadn't been a gunshot. It had been the deafening crack of a steel-tipped bullwhip, breaking the sound barrier at the exact instant that it had broken another layer of soft, yielding flesh.

Lucifer was already poised for another swing; his feet were planted, his shoulders were squared up with his target, and even as the door crashed to splinters behind him…

…he swung.

“NO!”

Suki threw herself into the path of the cold steel cracker, one woven from six-hundred and sixty-six steel threads, and spread her arms.

Lucifer snapped his hand back, and the thong of his deadly whip whispered innocently across the floor. “Suki?!” Then, with a little more fury and a lot less surprise… “MAAMMMOOOOON?!”

“I know, I know,” Mammon sighed, as he wrapped his wings around his waist like a towel, obediently stripped out of his clothes and started searching. When he found what he was looking for – a set of heavy iron shackles, permanently affixed to the wall – he locked one of his own wrists inside, then slid down the wall so he could sit on his ass, scroll through his DDD with his free hand, and patiently wait for his turn to be punished. “This was all my idea,” he lied, without taking his eyes off his phone, “so just… whatever she's got comin', give it to me, instead.”

“I most… certainly will,” Lucifer snarled, before fixing his glittering eyes, and all the crushing weight of his furious attention, on Suki. “Have you… gone mad? I could… have killed you.”

He was breathing hard. His shirt was unbuttoned and soaked through with sweat. His pants were wrinkled and his hair was disheveled, as though he'd been working the fields for three days straight under a merciless August sun. “You have… no business… being here,” he seethed. “We aren't… finished. Get… away from him. NOW.”

She didn't hear any of it.

“Oh, god… Satan? Satan?!”

He didn't look up, not at the sound of his own name nor at the delicate fingers that trembled as they brushed his dripping hair out of his face. Strung up from the ceiling by his tightly bound wrists, he was writhing and shuddering and groaning to himself, with whatever protests he might once have had being dutifully smothered by the heavy black ball-gag jammed between his teeth. His horns had holes drilled through them, and were chained together in what could have been a convenient handle, in case a card-carrying sadist wanted to force his victim to look him in the eye. His tail was coiling itself into agonized knots; his eyes were glassy and open a little too wide, staring at some distant spot far below the floor. Clothed only from the waist up, his back, and chest and his arms had been split wide-open by an intricate spiderweb of razor-thin slices, and the carpet under his feet was saturated and squishing with blood.

“Oh no, oh… oh no…” With the room blurring behind a curtain of tears, she reached around his head, unbuckled the gag and eased it out from between his seizing teeth. “It’s ok, it's all going to be ok; I can… I can get you out of here, alright? Say something… oh Satan, _please_ say something. Talk to me, _please!_ ”

After what seemed like an eternity, his eyelids fluttered. “S… Suki?” He blinked, so slowly that it seemed to take every last ounce of strength he had left, then lifted his head just high enough to look at her.

For a second, he just stared.

Stared and slowly blinked, as if he was struggling to remember where he'd seen her face before.

…Then his tail began to snap hatefully against the floor. His fingers twitched, then curled into white-knuckled fists, so tightly that trickles of blood began to creep out from between his claws.

His eyes narrowed, and began to burn with a toxic green light. The Avatar of Wrath bared his teeth, and spat his answer at her feet.

_**“Get... out.”** _

There were so many words in the English language, but no two had ever cut so deep.

Lucifer shoved her out of the way and ripped the gag out of her stunned hands. He wiped it off on his pants, then held the black ball in front of his brother's mouth.

The two exchanged a mutually loathing glare before Satan licked his cracked and bleeding lips, spat a mouthful of tarry phlegm onto the carpet, then obediently opened his mouth, took the gag back all on his own, and bowed his head to let Lucifer buckle it closed.

_We aren't finished._

_That’s just how they are._

She couldn't feel herself crying, but her cheeks were damp and her breath was hitching in her chest.

_It's how they've always been._

_It's how they always will be._

Lucifer crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her.

There was an accusation there, made all the more unbearable without the courtesy of any words to define it.

_Don't get involved._

Satan hissed around his gag, and glared right alongside his brother.

_We're not finished._

_Get out._

There were a thousand things she needed, so badly, to say; she needed to scream her outrage and demand to know what the hell was wrong with them, to beg them both to reconsider, if not for each other's sake, then for hers, to fall to her knees and beg forgiveness, to stammer out a million words until she found the magic ones that would turn back the clock and make everything right again…

There were a thousand things she needed to say, but they all tangled together in her head, and not a single one ever made it to her lips.

_Don't get involved._

_Get out._

_Get out._

_**Get out** _

With a heartbroken sob, she did… and she didn't look back.

*****

No sleep would come that night.

She laid in bed, hugging a pillow and pretending it was something with a sympathetic heartbeat, staring dead-eyed at the wall.

Too exhausted to be angry.

Too hollow to cry.

Too overwhelmed and burned out and used up to muster the feeling of… anything at all.

She skipped breakfast.

There would be two empty chairs at the breakfast table, and their finely upholstered silence would be unbearable.

She forced herself to go to every class on her schedule, though.

She took no notes.

She answered no questions.

When the teacher handed out a pop quiz, she stared at the first question until the time was up, then handed in an empty page.

But she went to every. goddamned. class.

Not dinner, though.

Not dinner.

Now she was right back where she'd started, cradling a pillow and staring at the wall, after a long, long day that felt as if it hadn't happened at all.

There was another knock at her door, just after midnight.

She didn't move.

She didn't even blink.

They were all worried, and one by anxious one, they’d all come to check on her.

Beel, after she’d missed breakfast.

Simeon, after she'd failed the pop quiz.

Luke had set a cupcake outside her door.

Belphie had a left his favorite pillow.

The knock came again, more insistently this time.

She pretended she couldn't hear it.

“Suki? Suki, I know you're in there,” the familiar voice sighed, “and I know I'm probably the last person you want to hear from, after… all that, but…”

Satan was fiercely intelligent. Suki had never known him to be flatly wrong about anything, ever.

Until now.

Just the sound of his voice was enough to flood her heart and eyes with joyful tears.

In her haste to get to the door, she tripped over one end table, one tree root and her own two feet.

The crashing, banging, cursing, laugh-crying cacophony proved enough cause for concern that Satan cracked open the door without yet being invited, and peeked inside. “Um… is everything ok in h-UFFFFF!”  


She threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his neck, so unprepared for a reunion that she hadn't dared dream possible that the only thing she could think to say was, “Satan! I’m… I'm so happy you're not dead!”

She should have been angry. She had every right to be, and if anyone on God’s green earth (or anywhere much lower than that) would have agreed, it was the Avatar of Wrath.

…But she was too thankful to remember that she should have been angry. Too relieved, too overwhelmed, too ineloquently _thankful_ to remember that she should have been angry.

Satan winced at the touch, but still smiled warmly and squeezed her up against his aching chest. He buried his face in her hair and stayed there, hidden in his secret happy-place from all the dark and awful truths of the world, until the familiar smell of her coconut shampoo left his eyes damp and his soul aching for forgiveness. “Oh, Suki, I'm… so sorry. For everything.”

“Don't apologize,” she whispered into his shoulder. “It's not your fault. Lucifer can't… I mean; what he did to you is… is just…”

“Shhhhh. Don't be too hard on him. It's as much my fault as his, and that… that horrible scene you walked in on…” he frowned, and pressed an apologetic kiss against the top of her head. “You were never supposed to see that. Humans aren't… programmed, for that sort of thing, and both… both he and I… understand that.” Looking more and more distracted by the word, Satan finally came right out and jabbed a fearless finger at the elephant in the room. “I’ll explain everything, but… do you mind if I sit on your bed while I do? I'm still in… a not-insignificant amount of pain, and-"

“Oh! Oh no, I… I can't believe I forgot…” Suki snatched her arms away, and took her first good look at him.

His chest was covered in bandages, and where those hadn’t been enough, expertly woven stitches. He looked as fragilely assembled as Frankenstein's monster, almost human and impossibly alive.

He eased himself onto her bed, grimacing every time he was forced to bend a joint, then heaved a heavy sigh of relief. “Mmmm. That's so much better. I keep feeling like I'm going to come apart at the seams if I move around too much,” he chuckled. “Come. Sit with me, please, and if you can still find it in your heart… hear me out.”

As badly as she wanted to do just that, there was one last elephant, one bigger than all the rest and hiding its tusks behind the curtains, that she just couldn't ignore any longer. “Lucifer… Is he… I mean, are you guys…”

“We're fine. He's asleep, at last. I asked him to come with me tonight, but he thought it better that I come to you alone.” He sighed, and slowly shook his head. “I don't really know how to explain everything, but… I’ll try my best. At the heart of it all is simply the fact that… we're demons, Suki. We pretend to be well-mannered and polite, mostly for your sake; we dress well and study hard and act like the finest upstanding members of high-society, but underneath it all…” he looked over his blood-stained claws, and heaved a heavy sigh, “…we're beasts. Animals. A snarling pack of wolves, gaining ground on a wounded victim. That's the beginning and the end of it all. We. Are. Demons.” A tiny hiss slipped between his lips as he shrugged off his bathrobe - Lucifer's bathrobe, actually – pulled her up against his chest, and gently stroked her hair. “This is just how we are. Humans solve their disagreements with bureaucracy and lawyers. Angels hold hands and sing kumbaya. But wolves...” He tipped her chin up so he could look into her eyes. “Wolves bite. They bite and they snarl and they hurl each other through the snow; they sink their teeth into each other's necks and try to rip open their throats, and it's brutal and it's awful, but in spite of it all… they don't kill each other, Suki, and that's… I hope that's what I can help you understand. Lucifer wasn't trying to kill me. He wasn't even punishing me. He never hit my face, or my spine, or my fingers, or anything else that might have caused any real, permanent damage. If he'd really wanted to hurt me, I wouldn't have lasted ten seconds,” he chuckled. “As much as I hate to admit it, Lucifer is very, very good at what he does.”

Suki blinked. That almost sounded like a… compliment?

“But… if he wasn't trying to hurt you…” She frowned at the dozens, at the hundreds of tight black stitches that were holding his broken body together; stitches that, it gradually dawned on her, had probably been carefully tied by the very same hands that had torn him apart. “If not that, then… why? What was the point?”

“The point was… that he loves you, Suki. More than anything else in this world, or the next. And…” the faintest hint of a blush blossomed on his cheeks, and he dropped his eyes so he could finally admit it out loud, “…so do I. He and I get along decently, now, mostly thanks to you, but we're… we're still who we are. We were never going to be able to share you,” he admitted, still with his eyes on his hands. “If the three of us were ever going to coexist, if things were ever going to go back to the way they were before, one of us, he or I… would have to step down,” he sighed. “Wolves don't fight to the death. They fight until they decide, together, which one more deserves to win. I could have stopped him, you know. If I wanted out, all I ever had to do was ask. With one look, I could have conceded… and he would have stayed his hand, and tended to my wounds, and loaned me his robe when trying to get into my own shirt had hurt so much it brought tears to my eyes, and everything would have been right in the world again, except… except that he'd be sitting here right now, explaining this all to you, instead of me. Does that… does any of this make sense?”  
It was unthinkable, and horrible, and utterly deranged, from any decent human’s eyes… but, as he has so succinctly reminded her already… they weren't human. Suki tried to… think like a demon? “I… I think so…”  


“See… he had to _know_ , Suki. He had to be certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I really do love you as deeply, as wholly, as purely and passionately, as I say I do. Lucifer loves you more than life itself. He would do anything for you. He would die for you. So before he could ever consider stepping down… he had to be absolutely sure that I would, too. He had to _know_.”

He kissed her, then, softly and tenderly, and the moment his warm lips touched hers, she knew.

She was certain.

She was absolutely sure that everything really was going to be ok, because this kiss felt so different from any they'd ever shared before.

This kiss felt like it had, at last, been blessed by an angel.


End file.
